‘Gardens and flowers have a way of bringing people together…’

We’ve been lucky enough to visit some of the most famous gardens in the world including Kew, Sissinghurst, and Kensington in England, Netherlands’ Keukenhof at tulip time, the National Arboretum in Washington, DC, Montreal’s Botanic Gardens, to name a few.

On July 8 we toured seven outstanding gardens right here in Montgomery County, Virginia, during the 22nd annual New River Valley Garden Tour, the best yet. I emoted all the way home.

They are different from each other, each enviable in unique ways, but if I had to pick just one, it would be the one where rust prevailed. Yup, rust.

The Angle-Relf garden is tucked away on a narrow winding road, set on a hill hidden from view if you headed east. The couple bought the rundown 40-year-old house in 1976 and set about taming its weed-covered four acres that was overly populated with locust and cedar.

To call their creative idyll imaginative is to beg a look at a Thesaurus for better adjectives to do it justice, perhaps fanciful or inspiredorquixotic. The pair reclaim and recycle with humor and vision, and always with rusty overtones.

All you need is a rusty propane tank, a bucket and other odds and ends, and voila, a cow!

Wok, tractor seat, and shovel make faces with the help of pie plate, muffin tin, and other rusty bits.

Paint brushes are wide-eyed and all stuck-up.

Mandevilla aka rocktrumpet brightens a corner of the wraparound deck.

Hosta in the kitchen sink.

Wild colors flung about with abandon.

Marigolds blend with rust tones.

What else but a water garden?

Cement encrusted hats rest on bowling ball hat stands

Greenhouse view.

Tour de France rejects.

Round and round: hayrack wheel, BBQ grill, microwave rack.

Retired watering cans.

Giant mushrooms.

Children’s clothes cast in plaster mix.

Garden tools make art.

Breezes blow fabric art where rust reigns.

This year’s seven gardens, the Angle-Relf’s, plus the Golden’s, Hagood’s, Hammett’s, Ryan-Plunket’s, Schnecker’s and Wickham’s all all provided multiple chances to fall in love with gardening. It was an absolutely picture-perfect, weather-perfect day.

Thanks, Roomie. That one was the first we visited. I was absolutely over the moon. The vistas, the quiet, and the picnic table under a tree (my photo was terrible) would be such a wonderful place for morning coffee. It really is a gorgeous spot.